NORTH BAY, ONT.—Laurence Fishburne is camped out in a dimly lit tunnel, leaning back in a director’s chair as he waits for makeup.

The actor is dressed in the costume of a post-apocalyptic survivor, a kind of grungy L.L. Bean chic, heavy boots and soiled cargos. But he might as well be wearing Armani — the actor’s innately regal bearing makes rags look like gold-threaded robes.

It is his first day on the set of The Colony after arriving from Los Angeles and he now finds himself, a little incongruously, 68 storeys below the earth, holed up in an underground nuclear bunker in this picturesque Northern Ontario city.

Seeing Morpheus from The Matrix can be a surreal experience in what was previously a movie star-free zone.

This is the first feature to be shot at Canada’s legendary NORAD bunker — the country’s most unusual military complex. Adding to the absurdity is the nearby craft table with coffee and cappuccino set up in a dank tunnel that was once classified top secret. Could the pizza delivery van be far behind?

The Colony takes cues from contemporary genre classics such as Children of Men and 28 Days Later. But none of those movies can boast a Cold War set that was once responsible for protecting the free world from the evil empire of the Soviets.

The underground complex was designed to withstand a four-megaton nuclear blast — 267 times bigger than the one at Hiroshima — making the “Hole,” as it is called by locals, the real star of the show.

Whether audiences can handle another end-of-civilization movie is another issue. With an expected release date of late 2013, the Star got a peek at what it takes to film in the bowels of the earth in Canada’s famed Cold War landmark.

“You will likely be the last civilians to see the complex as it was,” says North Bay mayor Al McDonald, who had turned out earlier to greet guests at the airport. “The fact that you’re even allowed down there is really incredible.”

To be allowed access, visitors must undergo a background check and cleared by security at a fenced-off zone. Once past the gates and the bomb-sniffing dog, a bus takes visitors on a claustrophobic two-kilometre ride down to a depth that is greater than the height of all but the tallest skyscrapers in Toronto.

Unlike much of the terrain of Southern Ontario, North Bay is on the Canadian Shield, and few things are as blast-proof as Precambrian rock. The underground complex, which officially opened in 1963, cost an astronomical $51 million at the time, with a third of that paid by Canada, the rest by the United States.

When sealed, the airtight complex could support 400 people for up to four weeks. During the peak of the cold war up to 700 people were working underground. It was a small city the size of a shopping centre, with its own barber shop, gym, medical centre and chaplain’s office.

As any fifth grader might tell you, Canada was the first line of defence in North America for an attack from the Soviets who would likely come over the Arctic.

“We just happened to be between the world’s two biggest adversaries,” says Doug Newman, a former operations officer at NORAD. “They built this to last because if something happened, the defence of Canada had to survive. If our complex was wiped out the Soviets would be able to fly through.”

Newman is demonstrating one of the three 19-ton steel doors that guard the entrance to the complex. He has someone push it with one hand to show it is still working. It glides effortlessly.

After five decades, the Hole is still in remarkable working order. It was mothballed in 2006 when a new above-ground complex was built. The antiquated computer equipment has been stripped away, but the generators and climate-control systems still hum.

At the famed command centre, where generals used to scramble jets to meet Soviet spy planes, there is a lone white dial-up phone on the floor. It was in this room that a Canadian general shut down commercial airline traffic in North America in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide attacks on the United States, while filling the skies with fighter jets. Little of that glory remains as cables now sprout forlornly from the ground.

“I feel like this is a lot of my life being stripped away slowly,” says Newman.

The officer takes guests through the rest of the giant complex. The rows of lockers and Formica flooring in the offices would not be out of place in an Etobicoke high school.

Once navigating the complex, you may need to remind yourself that above is sheer rock reinforced by scaffolding and mesh. The danger of falling shards is a real threat. Guards are vigilant that everyone wear hardhats.

A crew member walks by without one of the distinctive orange helmets. A guard yells at him to stop.

It turns out to be Canadian star Kevin Zegers (Gossip Girl) who plays a starring role in the movie. He sits down at a plastic table and puts a helmet on top of the grey toque he’s wearing.

Zegers says he didn’t know a lot about NORAD before arriving to film, despite the fact he’s from Woodstock, Ont. But he’s comfortable in a mine.

“My dad worked in a quarry. The mannerisms you get from being underground, the walk and the behaviour, after being down here it’s like the life is sucked out of you,” says Zegers.

There are drawbacks to working in the most secure military complex in Canada. While he can still get a pretty fine cappuccino, there’s no chance of mobile reception.

“It’s not the end of the world. When people are on movie sets they disconnect and go to their trailer; you can’t do that here.”

Zegers may not be impressed with his surroundings, but co-star Bill Paxton (Aliens, Big Love) is still a little in awe of being so far underground.

“I didn’t know this place even existed,” says Paxton.

The actor was walking around earlier with a prop rifle slung around his shoulder, having just wrapped a pivotal scene with Fishburne.

He pulls up a chair and puts down the blue plastic shopping bag that carries his script. A week earlier he was in Toronto at a comfortable hotel. He says he wasn’t aware they would be shooting inside a former NORAD base.

“One day I’m in Toronto and now I’m here. Just getting inside here is something else. The road just kept going and going like an amusement park ride and here we are 600 feet underground. I feel like I’m in a coal mine.”

Both Paxton and Zegers acknowledge that the world doesn’t need another “day after” movie.

“If you’re just making the ice age colony movie — I wouldn’t want to go see that movie. But this isn’t the stereotypical script,” assures Zegers.

Paxton, who has a huge cult following because of his many scene-stealing action roles in Aliens, Apollo 13 and True Lies, calls the script “A bit of a Frankenstein monster. There is a bit of The Alamo, a little bit of Aliens, there’s a bit of Lord of the Rings with the power struggle that takes place,” he says. “The interesting thing is how do you portray someone who has given up their humanity to survive?”

It’s been a long road for Barkin and the director, Victoria native Jeff Renfroe. Barkin worked for two years to get the Department of National Defence to agree to the shoot, including writing a passionate six-page letter outlining his plans. When he finally got the green light he was ecstatic.

“When I first saw this place I went, ‘Oh god, this is purpose built for my movie,’” says Barkin.

The producer had been developing the screenplay focused on an ice age where people lived underground. Some of it was based on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, also known as the “Doomsday vault,” housing millions of seeds that could be replanted in the event of a major environmental catastrophe. While not a zombie movie, the film examines the breakdown in an underground society as it disintegrates into violence.

“In many ways this is what the complex was built for, to see what happens during a disaster, so I think that was also intriguing to them,” says Barkin. “Once I got the location down, things started rolling because it was the first tangible thing I could show to people to help them visualize what this could be.”

Apart from not using pyrotechnics in the underground complex, there were few restrictions imposed by the military.

Financing was easier with NORAD as the calling card. From a budget that began in the low millions, the film is now expected to cost $17 million, a considerable figure for a Canadian-produced feature.

Barkin may also have the honour of being the last producer to film in the Hole as it exists today.

After the underground complex was shut, some public tours were allowed. But no longer.

There has been much debate over what to do with the Hole. Some have suggested that it would make an ideal computer hardware storage facility. Maybe even a unique hotel.

It still costs the government a significant outlay every year to keep the lights on. And North Bay would like to see something done with the facility that would generate revenue and attract tourists. Certainly it would make a hell of a museum. The city’s current big attraction is the Dionne Quintuplets house.

But a crazy roller coaster ride in the dark that takes you into a nuclear bunker? Now that would be entertainment.

“I still can’t believe we’re allowed in here,” marvels Barkin.

Get to know NORAD

NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defence Command. It’s a joint organization between Canada and the United States. Construction on the subterranean command centre in North Bay began in August 1959. It opened in October 1963.

• The complex is the only NORAD air defence centre built underground. It was operating two years before NORAD headquarters began operations inside Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain.

• NORAD originally stood for North American Air Defence Command. In 1981 the “Air” was dropped and “Aerospace” added.

• North Bay was chosen because it sits atop Precambrian granite, which is great natural armour in a nuclear attack. It also had a large body of water nearby in Trout Lake, needed to cool the complex, and the city was a crossroads of highway and rail systems.

• Shortly after it opened, a taxi driver in North Bay drove into the complex. The Royal Canadian Air Force had said that it couldn’t afford security at the time. The scandal meant major security upgrades.

• Major known hazards for employees include falling rocks that “will suffice to destroy a hardhat” or fatally injure a person.

Source: Canadian Forces

Six degrees of Bill Paxton

Maybe it’s all coincidence, but Bill Paxton has a history of appearing in movies with bizarre filming locations.

Although the NORAD underground bunker used as a set in The Colony may take the prize as the most unusual, there are other contenders from his acting résumé for the “weirdest place to film a movie” contest. Here are a few:

Apollo 13 (1995): The Ron Howard-directed feature co-starred Paxton as astronaut Fred Haise. He and costars, including Tom Hanks, were airborne in a set that was specially designed to fit inside NASA’s KC-135 aircraft, also known as the “Vomit Comet,” which simulates zero gravity by diving in freefall. Each take got a maximum of 25 seconds’ worth of footage, before the next round of freefall, with the actors floating around weightlessly as though they were truly in deep space.

Titanic (1997): As we all know by now, director James Cameron likes to think big. So he constructed a full-sized replica of the Titanic’s exterior (to 90 percent scale) in Mexico, suspended in a 17-million-gallon tank, for deck-side and seafaring scenes. Paxton played treasure hunter Brock Lovett.

Aliens (1986): Paxton plays the memorably abrasive Private Hudson in this earlier Cameron flick, which was filmed inside the decommissioned Acton Lane Power Station in London, England.

Paxton gives the often quoted line, “Why don’t you put her in charge?” when lead character Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, tells him that a “little girl” survived on her own while living with the alien creatures.

In The Colony, Paxton nixed a similar line for his character during the first week of filming.

“It was a little too familiar,” he told the Star.

Paxton is now in pre-production on Kung Fu, the movie, based on the popular TV series that starred David Carradine. The actor has been pegged to direct the feature. He says this time around the movie will feature a “culturally authentic” lead with an Asian background. It will also be filmed in China, not on a studio backlot. And we’ll be on the lookout for new and unorthodox filming locations.

Tony Wong

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.